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Dante Alighieri's Exile Was Divine Opportunity; Mighty Pen: Expelled from Florence, the writer transformed his sense of alienation and loss into a masterpiece

By J. BONASIA04/14/2005 03:00 AM ET

As a middle-aged man in the late Middle Ages, the Italian poet Dante Alighieri lost everything he had, including his family, his home, his books and his fortune. Despite this bitter setback, Dante devoted his life to writing one of the greatest epics of all time. "The Divine Comedy" is broken into three sections. As the poem's narrator, Dante first visits hell in the "Inferno," then the way station in "Purgatorio" before reaching heaven in "Paradiso." In this context, comedy refers to an upbeat dramatic ending rather than a humorous story. Dante's tale works as a kind of dreamlike allegory by weaving together classical myth, Christian theology and historical events. Scholars often compare the poem to the very best literature of Homer, Virgil, Chaucer and Shakespeare. Indeed, few poets from history can match Dante (1265-1321) in terms of his elegance, scope and grasp of the human condition, says Robert Pinsky, the former U.S. poet laureate who published an award-winning translation of "Inferno" in 1994. Don't Get Mad, Get Creative "Here is an epic work in which the protagonist wields not a spear or a sword, but a pen," Pinsky said. "You might say that instead of getting even, he turned his fantasies into a great work of art." Two events were central to Dante's life. The first was a chance street encounter he had as a youngster in his hometown of Florence, Italy. There he saw a pretty 9-year-old girl named Beatrice in a crimson dress. Dante was consumed by a mystical love for Beatrice, although she did not know him. The two grew up to marry other spouses, and Beatrice died suddenly at age 24 in 1290. Dante's first major work, "La Vita Nuova" or "The New Life," celebrated the strength of his lifelong devotion to her. By his mid-30s, Dante was serving as a Florence city official. He was part of a political faction that wanted to separate the powers of church and state. Dante's group, the White Guelphs, supported more civil government by the Holy Roman Empire. The opposing Black Guelphs pushed for more control by the Catholic Church. Dante's stance angered Pope Boniface VIII, who wanted to expand the church's political reach. When Dante made a diplomatic trip to Rome in 1302, he was falsely charged with corruption and hostility against the church. The pope arranged a coup and had Dante exiled from his beloved Florence under the threat of death. Dante never returned home. Instead, he wandered alone through the courts of northern Italy. Somehow he found the strength to transmute his sorrow into a work of uncommon depth and beauty, says Giuseppe Mazzotta, professor of medieval studies at Yale University. "This was a major contribution to human history that showed the power of the human imagination," said Mazzotta, who is president of the Dante Society of America, the nation's oldest literary group. Dante's inspiration stemmed from his crushing sense of loss and alienation, says Guy Raffa, associate professor of Italian at the University of Texas. Dante clearly suffered a horrible misfortune, Raffa says. "But being in political exile was something he turned to his advantage," he said. The poem's journey starts with Dante framing his personal account as a kind of universal experience through use of the pronoun "we" in the very first line: "Half way along the road we have to go," he wrote, "I found myself obscured in a great forest,/Bewildered, and I knew I had lost the way." Along the path back to spiritual renewal, Dante contributed several literary innovations. For example, the concepts of heaven and hell were already established in Roman myths and the Bible. But Dante added many new details about both realms. Hellishly Good He also tackled fresh subject matter. He depicted purgatory as a wasted limbo for indecisive souls. And he created an extensive hierarchy for sinners and their matching punishments in hell. For instance, flatterers were doomed to a disgusting ditch of feces. Hypocrites spent eternity walking in circles while draped in glittering lead robes. Blasphemers were banished to a scorching desert amid a blizzard of burning snowflakes. And those guilty of graft were thrown into a boiling river of pitch and slashed by demons. Dante was the first author to write in the Italian spoken word, rather than the standard Latin. His work in the Florentine dialect evolved into the current Italian language, says Rachel Jacoff, who holds the Margaret E. Deffenbaugh and LeRoy T. Carlson professorship in comparative literature at Wellesley College. "Writing in Italian was a terrific gamble," Jacoff said. "Nobody had tried any serious literature in anything but Latin." Also, Dante broke ground by inventing a new rhyme scheme known as terza rima, or third rhyme. Remarkably, he followed this rhyming pattern of ABA/BCB/CDC etc. for 14,233 lines. And he adopted the brisk canto format for his poem. Cantos contained faster-moving episodes than previous epics written in longer books. In addition, Dante portrayed Beatrice as the first strong female figure in Western literature. Dante's narrator initially followed the poet Virgil through hell and purgatory. Then Beatrice was boldly cast as his guide through paradise. In the book, the two ascend to heaven on Easter Sunday 1300: "I saw gathered there in the depths of it," Dante wrote, "Bound up by love into a single volume,/All the leaves scattered through the universe;/Substance and accidents and their relations,/But yet fused together in such a manner/That what I am talking of is a simple light." In many ways, Beatrice served as Dante's ultimate redeemer, with even her name evoking beatitude. Although she was an actual person, Dante idealized her character as celestial and holy, says Alessandro Gentili, who heads the study-abroad program in Florence for James Madison University. "The literature transcends the reality. Beatrice becomes an icon," Gentili said. "She's a mirror of the divine beauty." A Well-Versed Scholar To achieve such a sweeping vision, Dante must have studied extensively throughout his life, says Dennis Costa, associate professor of Italian and comparative literature at Boston University. Dante was not only deeply familiar with great poetry, but also with many science and astronomy texts, Costa says. Based on the range of allusions in Dante's poem, he was probably "one of the most well-read people in Europe in the 14th century," Costa says. Dante wrote many other lyric poems, political commentaries and religious epistles while serving as an emissary for certain Italian noblemen. He finished his masterpiece, "The Divine Comedy," in 1321, shortly before his death from suspected malaria in Ravenna, Italy. "Dante's work seeks to combine our human and divine natures," Costa said. "The poet not only wants to move the reader, but to change the reader's life."